Judith Randolph-Longwood NSDAR Chapter Hosts Author

The public is cordially invited to attend the Judith Randolph-Longwood Chapter, NSDAR meeting on April 8, 2014 at 3:30 p.m., which is to be held at the Historic Farmville Train Station in Farmville, Virginia.

Connie Lapallo, author of two historic novels, Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky and the sequel, When the Moon Has No More Silver, will be the guest speaker. Her novels tell of the true story of Jamestown’s first women and children. Her books use history as their source as she integrates it into the lives of the characters as they live from day to day. Many of the characters are her family living in Jamestown during these early years.

Mrs. Lapallo is a 15th generation descendent whose genealogy begins with her grandmother, Cecily, who came to Jamestown in 1611 when she was nine years old. Mrs. Lapallo wrote, “Her mother Joan had come two years before that in 1609. These facts were indisputable in the records. Yet most history books told me no women or children were at Jamestown. The realization that we had not only forgotten these women, but even denied their existence wouldn’t let me go. I kept picturing all the unmarked graves of women and children that must surely be beneath the soil of Jamestown Island.” She wrote, “All their eyes are upon me. They are me.”

Mrs. Lapallo is recognized as a historian and has addressed the Virginia Monument Commission concerning Virginia’s seventeenth-century women. She has presented a paper at the Virginia Forum on “Marriage and Childbirth in James Towne and the Settlements along the James River in the early 1600’s”.

Mrs. Lapallo began writing at age sixteen. She has a degree in finance from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Georgia Tech. She has worked at Berkley Plantation as a tour guide where she credits her learning of storytelling skills. Mrs. Lapallo lives in Mechanicsville. She is married and has four children, three of whom are in college.